Book Review

Review of Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind

Author:

Jonathan S Simmons

University of Alberta, CA

Abstract

Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind expands on a pilot study of non-believing Protestant ministers that Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola published in Evolutionary Psychology in 2010. As a continuation of the study, this slight but engaging book similarly concerns those who entered the clergy but were unable to move beyond their doubts.

Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind expands on a pilot study of
non-believing Protestant ministers that Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola published in
Evolutionary Psychology in 2010. As a continuation of the study,
this slight but engaging book similarly concerns those who entered the clergy but were
unable to move beyond their doubts. LaScola did the empirical heavy-lifting, conducting
in-depth interviews with thirty-five participants across the pilot study in this more
substantive work, while Dennett provides an evolutionary interpretation of this data.
LaScola’s informants include clergy, students, and seminary professors, among whom
many are members of the Clergy Project, an online safe space for active and former
religious leaders who “have actively rejected a belief in a supernatural
worldview”. The authors rely heavily on the Clergy Project, but do not have direct
access to or influence on the confidential community and its prospective members.

The book is organized into seven sections with a forward by Richard Dawkins. Although
each section is important, it is the second section—“Five
Sketches”—that earns the book its title. LaScola develops five portraits of
former and current clergy, including a Presbyterian pastor, a Lutheran pastor, a
Lutheran seminary dropout, a Roman Catholic priest, and a Mormon Bishop. LaScola allows
the participants to speak for themselves, often in lengthy block quotes, limiting her
input to clarification and the occasional aside. A common theme throughout
participants’ responses is the impact of seminary. It is therefore appropriate
that LaScola also interviews seminary professors of Old and New Testament Studies. She
found that learning textual criticism had a profound effect on many former or current
clergy, and that the professors struggled to overcome their students’ sudden and
painful disillusionment.

Dennett’s main contributions are two sections entitled “Breaking the Shell:
Transparency and the Survival of Religions” and “The Inner
Shell—Isolating Pastors from their Parishioners and from Themselves”.
Together, they offer a rather timid look at the struggles of pastors through the lens of
evolutionary theory. According to Dennett, religions, like cells, have developed
“Good Tricks” for maintaining their membranes. Although some cultural
phenomena may bear resemblances to biological cells, Dennett’s analogy has limited
explanatory value. Also, the transition from autobiographical statements to cute analogy
is jarring, especially since Dennett concludes with the trivial observation that
churches need to adapt in order to survive. The “Inner Shell” is the better
of the two sections, largely because Dennett more plainly addresses the struggles facing
clergy as they try to come to terms with the new transparency of the information age.
Self-deception, he argues, is not only inevitable for doubting clergy, but also a luxury
that they may not have for long.

One of the book’s main drawbacks is the lack of clarity about its intended aim and
audience. If the authors’ main objective is to explore the “disconnect
between what closeted non-believing clergy believe and what they preach”, then the
five sketches introduced early in the book are sufficient, without the Darwinian gloss.
If, however, the authors’ Darwinian interpretation is meant to take centre stage,
then the lack of rigour with which this is performed is surprising. Dennett’s use
of analogy resembles a rhetorical trick more than a scientific hypothesis. Nevertheless,
Caught in the Pulpit may serve as a therapeutic work for
nonbelieving clergy who struggle with doubt and deception. From a scholarly perspective,
however, the project would have been better served if the authors had teased out the
links between questioning clergy and their exposure to non-belief through “New
Atheist” publications or other media.

Although, in the chapter “Emerging Themes”, LaScola does reflect on the
struggles of liberal clergy who often appear to be atheists in all but name, there is
insufficient exploration of the parallels and contrasts between those who might think of
religion in mythical, metaphorical, or apophatic terms, and those who simply identify as
atheist or agnostic. For example, one of the respondents discusses revisiting his
unanswered questions in the work of liberal Christian writers. The fact that he finds
value in story and tradition rather than the literal supernatural cries out for
exploration, but the reader is left waiting until much later in the book when LaScola
discusses how liberal clergy often equivocate on matters related to doctrine. Attempting
to find truth in myth, however, is central to understanding how clergy move from belief
to non-belief, and worthy of more prominent treatment.

The whiff of missed opportunities hangs over Caught in the Pulpit. As
Dawkins observes, kindness shines from every page of the book, but empathy, as an
overarching objective, is sometimes at odds with other equally noble goals. Scholars of
secularism and non-religion will find little surprising here, and that which does
surprise lacks the requisite analysis that one might desire from a treatment of such an
understudied issue. Nevertheless, I recommend the book for starting a conversation, and
for giving a voice to a poorly understood minority.